


lips like tangerines and his color coded speak

by derogatory



Category: Warchild Series - Karin Lowachee
Genre: Christmas Fluff, M/M, Mistletoe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-06 20:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5429534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/derogatory/pseuds/derogatory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>five mistletoe kisses on Macedon</p>
            </blockquote>





	lips like tangerines and his color coded speak

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weirdfastballs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weirdfastballs/gifts).



i.  
Excited chatter crowds the festive deck corridors. Cairo had refused Evan's suggestion that they pump Christmas songs through the carrier's intercom system. One- because the intercom system should only be used in emergencies- and two- because it would be annoying. But in the absence of music, there were plenty of other holiday-themed decorations. While an actual tree was impossible to come by in the depths of space, synthetic garland, wreaths, and lights were easy enough to obtain, lining the corridors from the bridge to Engineering.

Dorr even offered to help get the ship in the holiday spirit, although only going so far as to tie up strange bundles of berried plants and ribbon, and placing them in various locations around the carrier.

"I hear this stuff like, chemically makes people do it," Evan says around his cigret, surveying the Corporal's handiwork. There's a dozen or so mistletoe bundles on every deck. "Y'know, like an aphrodisiac."

Ryan rolls his eyes, leaning away from the puff of smoke blown in his direction.

"No, that's not how plants work." Ryan occasionally forgets he's surrounded by people who have never had their feet on solid ground. "I think it's just like, an implicit dare?"

Evan makes a short 'hm' noise from the back of his throat, clearly unimpressed.

"No way." He stamps out the cig on the deck between them. "You're telling me Dorr put up these weird things just to _dare_ people to kiss each— Wait, actually that does sound a lot like him. Nevermind."

Ryan glances at the jets that mill past them, couples arm-in-arm. "It's working, isn't it? I've seen enough people trading saliva to last me the next year."

"I guess," Evan sniffs. "Hey c'mere." When Ryan turns, Evan is suddenly much closer, body crowding his towards the bulkhead. He gently presses his lips to the startled lines of Ryan's mouth.

Evan snickers when he pulls back, chuffing a hand under Ryan's chin. "How's that for an 'implicit dare'?"

  


* * *

  


ii.  
The Christmas lights lining the halls of the ship are cheap imitations of stars, and after a long march back to their quarters, their glare burns behind Finch's eyelids. They're giving him a headache with all their too-bright twinkling.

"They're going overboard with all those damn lights," Finch mutters. Yuri ignores his complaint and curls under the blankets, lining his spine with Finch's chest. Even while the rest of the ship's excitement about the holiday builds to a fever pitch, Yuri and Finch spent the time working their hands ragged in medbay.

His fingertips ghost the ends of Yuri's pale hair. "Did your family celebrate Christmas?"

"Did yours?" Yuri deflects the question easily.

"Yeah, when they were alive." There's a guilty wince from Yuri at his words. Finch wants to run his hands over that shudder, to comfort him, but his arm lays rigid over Yuri's shoulders. "It was a long time ago."

"Okay," Yuri murmurs into the pillow, unconvinced. He shifts his weight against the bunk. "We didn't celebrate, not really. Falcone and religion," he trails off, gesturing vaguely in the shadows, rustling the blanket that lay over them.

A pause.

"What about before Falcone?" Finch asks softly.

Yuri doesn't reply. His breathing is slow, but shallow enough he's still awake. He stays like that for a long time, silent and thinking, and Finch hesitantly holds him tighter. He can feel Yuri's body's heat through the blanket, through his clothes. He rests his head on Yuri's shoulder, letting the steady sound of his heartbeat coax the kid to sleep.

 

 

On Christmas Eve, the three of them, Finch, Yuri, and Piotr, volunteer for a shift in Medical. It's maudlin work, but Finch is aching for its quiet; in the middle of their sleepshift, some drunk jets had started caroling outside their room. He thought dealing with drunken assholes was behind him when he left the shipyards, but posturing and idiocy always seems to be close by, no matter where he goes.

He casts a glance back at Yuri. Piotr is walking behind him, and a sober looking jet guard is taking up the rear.

As annoying as they were, the singing jets didn't wake Finch; he was already wide awake when they started their song. Yuri had fallen asleep without answering his question. In the dark Finch's thoughts drifted to Yuri's family, to Colonial Grace, to traditions that started before the pirates. It was probably out of line to have asked him. If he had pushed, Yuri might have twisted out from under his arm and started pacing.

Yuri's family is out there, and he says the captain is willing to arrange something. Maybe the holidays are a shit time to bring it up, or maybe it's the perfect time. When he had asked, maybe Finch only imagined the tension over Yuri's shoulders. Too many things left to chance from one question.

Yuri hasn't sleepwalked once on _Macedon_ , but Finch isn't sure that will last.

The lights are still too damn bright and Finch squints away from them. His eyes fall on a scraggly handful of evergreen and berries draped along the framing of the ceiling.

Yuri hasn't celebrated Christmas in years, possibly never, and it's cruel that his first experience of the holiday should come from Finch's errant line of questioning in the dead of night.

Finch slows and lets Yuri catch up to walk alongside him. 

He steels his nerves and reaches out, catching Yuri's sleeve in his hand as they pass under the mistletoe. There are better holiday experiences to share.

Mid-step, Yuri turns his face towards him. "What—" Yuri moves too quick and his lips catch the kiss Finch had been aiming for his cheek. The kiss is disarmingly chaste. Finch would have reveled in the flush building under Yuri's white skin if there wasn't a similar heat rising over his own face.

The startled jet guard fumbles, trying not to drop his rifle, and Piotr howls with laughter. Yuri swipes at the pirate and shouts insults Finch is too distracted to hear. 

Finch's mouth had felt the grooves on Yuri's lower lip where he had worried at them with his teeth. They were softer than he expected.

  


* * *

  


iii.  
By Christmas Eve, some idiot already tried to eat the mistletoe and Mercurio orders that the parasitic plants are taken down. Most of the jets are too hopped up on the eggnog to bother helping, and Cairo has more important things to do than enforce health/gardening regulations. Luckily, there is one passenger on the ship who's willing to go the extra mile to stay on the captain's good side.

After dinner, Sid's already gathered a dozen or so of the poisonous plants. Ryan mills beside him, never offering much help beyond letting Sid take the occasional sip from his eggnog.

With a low hiss through his teeth, Sid steps back to survey the latest mistletoe target, positioned well out of his reach. "What's the point of placing it in the stairwells? Nobody uses these."

"Probably so Dorr could get some private time with you," Ryan snickers, fingers tapping along his glass.

"No way." Sid nods at the ceiling. "How's somebody Dorr's size gonna reach that high?" he counters and Ryan dissolves into laughter.

"How're _you_ gonna reach that high?"

"I'm not. _You_ are. Come here, I'll hoist you up." Sid's suggestion hits Ryan slowly, delayed by the alcohol in his system. The bodyguard rolls his eyes at the pause, reaching forward. "Put the 'nog down." With a stifled smile, Ryan watches as Sid plucks the glass from his hand, setting it on the grate. His hands close around Ryan's waist and the smile grows.

"This is kinda— shit," Ryan gasps as Sid effortlessly lifts him off his feet and straight up. He flails, his moods shifting quickly from amorous to awkward, torso straining around Sid's tight grip.

"Stop squirming and grab it," Sid grits, squeezing to avoid dropping him. Ryan, at a tense but comfortable reaching height, plucks the mistletoe from its perch. Sid gently lowers him back to the ground, and although his hands stay where they were, his hold around Ryan's waist is lighter.

For all of Ryan's yelping, he relaxes when his feet are back on the deck, returning to his earlier thought. "So." He casts a cursory glance at their surroundings. "You really think nobody goes back here?"

"No one other than— hey." Sid smiles, wide and white, when Ryan slides his hands over Sid's chest, lacing his fingers at the back of his bodyguard's neck. The mistletoe drops to the grate and Ryan eagerly tips his mouth up to meet Sid's.

This is probably the worst way to get on Captain Azarcon's good side.

  


* * *

  


iv.  
Jos scowls at the cluster of mistletoe hanging outside the mess hall. Wasn't someone supposed to take these things down before another person got sick? The plants have got to be rotting by now.

There's the usual breakfast crowd, and the footsteps approaching him are easy and familiar.

"What're you doing?" Evan asks at his shoulder. "Waitin' for a kiss? Sorry." He apologizes for the joke quickly, but his expression is remorseless.

Jos fixes him with a stare like Evan is the thing that's rotting. "Did you put these up?"

"Why is it always an accusation with you?" His mouth creases into an unhappy line.

"Because the decorations were your job."

Evan is touchy, but he bounces back quickly enough. "Oh, right. Nah, I heard it was Dorr." He stretches his arms over his head. "Part a his neverending quest to get a kiss off of the bodyguard. You sure you wanna be standing here?" The implication takes a few minutes to sink in. Under the mistletoe.

Jos heeds Evan's advice, walking quickly down the corridor. Evan follows at his heels, always does, and Jos tries not to think of how it's the reverse of how things were on _Mukudori_.

"Are you going back to q?"

"No, Niko has some questions about the captain's arrival next week."

"Working on Christmas morning?" Evan whistles low through his teeth. "Guess strivs don't really do Christmas."

"No, they don't." Jos doesn't spare him a second glance. "It'll be nice to get some peace and quiet for once." Evan slept straight through the carolers; Jos wasn't so lucky. 

"Sure. When you get back, there's a gift on your bunk." Jos' footsteps lag. He stares back in confusion while Evan continues quickly, "From me. Does Niko do Christmas? Since he's not like, really a striv and all."

"No. What do you mean, 'a gift'? I told you not to get me anything."

Irritated, Jos stops walking. Evan lingers at his side. Always does. He mutters, "Yeah, you say that every year."

"And you listened then."

"Well, this time I changed my mind," Evan snaps. "Look, it's just a thing. Don't make a big deal outta it. Throw it away then, see if I care." 

Jos frowns. "I didn't get you anything."

"I don't mind," he shrugs, trying to shake the sudden dip in his mood. "Like you said, strivs don't do Christmas. You're outta practice." 

"That's not an excuse," Jos replies, inexplicably arguing a point he was trying to shut down earlier. Fighting with Evan is exhausting, it always does his head in.

"I guess not." Evan fidgets with the sleeves of his shirt. "Didn't really celebrate it with the pirates neither, and I still manage it fine." 

His smile is strained, and looking at it aches Jos like pressing on a bruise. A wash of reluctant sympathy rolls over him, thick and overpowering. They're both out of practice with Christmas, and even with _Macedon_ making a huge show of it, it doesn't soothe over the years they've missed.

Whatever is waiting for him in his q, it's probably not 'just a thing.' It will have sentiment and gratitude; something Evan put a lot of thought into. It makes him mad, but not in the way Jos usually feels, not in the way where he wants to hit him. 

Ears burning under Jos' stare, Evan turns away. "Look, there's another one." Another batch of mistletoe hangs over the corridor. 

Every motion of Jos' body feels strained, like he's sloughing through that wave, his own belated empathy. He breaks the surface and closes the distance between them. Evan tenses, but he doesn't struggle away. He stopped fighting Jos a long time ago. At first Jos might have said it was because Evan had no sense of self-preservation, now Jos understands Evan just stopped putting up protections against him.

He's close, and it's like wanting to hit someone, but different.

Evan is a statue under his kiss, Jos' lips grazing over his cheek for only a second. Jos tries to keep the shape of his mouth from a grimace. With his luck, after all this Evan probably only gave him something emotionless and practical, like socks. 

Jos pulls away. That wouldn't be so bad. He actually needed new socks.

Before Evan can make some smartass comment or try to return the kiss, Jos reaches over their heads and tears the mistletoe down. He resumes his brisk pace towards the conference rooms, berries crushed in his fist.

Momentarily rooted to the deck, Evan's thought process crawls along, fingers reflexively touching the spot on his cheek where Jos' mouth had been.

Evan jogs after him. "Hey! Wait, don't touch it. Those things are poisonous, I heard some guy almost died from 'em." 

  


* * *

  


v.  
Christmas mornings on Austro were like nothing Sid had ever seen before. Song had gone all out when it came to gifts, so much so that by the time Ryan was fourteen, they were paying people to open their piles of presents for them. It made Sid nauseous at first, that level of wealth and excess. It wore off when Song gave Sid a watch that must've cost more than what the military paid in a year.

Even without her extravagant presents, Song had made him feel included in their family Christmases in Austro. He doesn't expect that kind of Christmas morning treatment from the captain. Azarcon deserves to spend the holiday with his son, alone. Sid can always see Ryan and exchange presents later.

For now, his wakeshift is completely free to investigate the rumor he'd heard. Sid focuses on that instead.

"No way," he laughs, medbay hatch closing behind him.

"Knew you'd visit," Dorr grins from the hospital bed. He's sprawled over the sheets, his only sign of weakness being a grayish tint to his skin and the IV that darts into his arm. "True love's kiss here to save me."

"Not a chance," Sid says, crossing the room to the invalid. "When I heard a jet was sick from eating mistletoe, I figured you'd force fed it to them." His eyes rake over Dorr's laid-up position, unimpressed.

"Hey, it wasn't just hangin' off the ceiling," Dorr explains. Sid nods, amusement across his face. "It was positioned very appetizin'ly on O'Neil's—" 

He cuts Dorr off with a grimace. "Ugh, I don't need the details. Where did you even get that stuff? Mistletoe." In his efforts to retrieve the errant plant, Sid had noticed it wasn't a synthetic imitation, but the real Earth-born deal. It might have been grown in a hothouse on a station, but getting it on _Macedon_ couldn't have been cheap.

Dorr flashes his teeth. "Nothin' but the best for my boy in blue."

He sits at the edge of the hospital bed. Warningly, like he used to reprimand Ryan, "You're incorrigible." 

"And you ain't overly observant."

Sid follows the other man's staring, looking up to the deck ceiling over them; there's a batch of mistletoe hanging just over the bed. He opens his mouth to tell Dorr off, but suddenly he's there. For someone laid up from eating a poisonous plant, Dorr could hustle when he wanted to.

He expected the kiss to have more violence. Not that he ever expected to be kissing Dorr. Or that he really welcomed it.

Dorr's thumb grazes the tender spot under his ear, fingers wrapped around the back of his neck. Sid feels his lips part, a warm exhale fluttering across his mouth. He pushes him back with a hand on Dorr's chest. "Don't."

Even poisoned, Sid knows Dorr has the muscle to stay exactly where he wants. He only let Sid push him away.

Dorr tongues his lip and keeps his distance. "Scared you'll like it too much?"

"More like scared you're gonna get me sick." Sid wipes his mouth. He hopes the tingling sensation Dorr's mouth left behind isn't onset mistletoe poisoning. There's no way it was still there.

"Don't worry, Maroon, I ain't got any venereal diseases. Testament to the cap's dedication to his jets."

"More like a testament to the power of penicillin." He gives the other soldier a chaste pat on the knee. "Merry Christmas, Dorr."

When Dorr grins, it's all teeth. "Merry Christmas, Siddy."

**Author's Note:**

> SEE I CAN WRITE NICE THINGS!!!
> 
> ps; it was socks


End file.
